*Learning Log - Helvetica

Introduction
Helvetica is the name of a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger.

Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger (MEE-din-gurr) with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on Schelter-Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.In 1960, the typeface's name was changed by Haas' German parent company Stempel to Helvetica — derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland — in order to make it more marketable internationally.

Alternative character sets
Helvetica Fractions contains only characters representing numbers, fractions, percentages.

Helvetica Central European contains only characters supporting letters found in Central European languages.

Helvetica Cyrillic contains only just enough characters supporting letters found in Basic Latin and Cyrillic code pages.

Helvetica Greek contains only just enough characters supporting letters found in Basic Latin and Greek code pages.

Helvetica World is a family of four fonts published by Linotype in 2002. It contains 1866 glyphs per font, supporting characters from Latin Extended, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, superscripts and subscripts, letter-like symbols, arrows, mathematical symbols, box drawing, block elements, alphabetic presentation forms, Arabic presentation forms. Similar to Arial, Arabic glyphs do not have fixed weight within each glyph.

Styling variants
Helvetica Inserat is a redrawn version of Helvetica Black Condensed that gives the glyphs a more squared appearance, similar to Impact and Haettenschweiler. Strike with strokes in $, ¢ are replaced by non-strikethrough version. 4 is opened at top. Cyrillic characters are supported.

Helvetica Textbook contains monospaced version of the font. Some characters such as 1, 4, 6, 9, I, a, f, q, mu, and ¶ are drawn differently from the proportional space version.

Helvetica Rounded (1978) contains rounded stroke terminators. Only bold, bold oblique, black, black oblique, bold condensed, bold condensed, bold outline fonts were made, with outline font not issued in digital form by Linotype.